Abstract

Education plays a very special role in Dewey’s System of thought. And according to Dewey, science, being knowledge at its best, has an unsurpassable educational value which every genuine democracy must take seriously. Here I try to show how and why Dewey developed this point of view. I start by considering how, in Dewey’s System, education is seen as a form of experience deeply significant to philosophy. Then I try to stress the most inte resting points concerning Dewey’s view of education as a social process. This leds me to explain why Dewey thought that the best kind of education should occur in a democratic environment and what does he mean by that. At this point it becomes possible to effectively understand where Dewey saw the educational value of scientific knowledge and how, according to him, should that value be promoted. Since the superiority of scientific knowledge lies in its method, Dewey argued, science becomes deprived of all its educational value whenever is taught, as ususal, as a mere ready-made subject-matter.